Chapters 7 and 8 of the Gospel contain for the most part individual stories of healings and miracles performed by Christ himself. Then at Luke 9:1 Luke turns from Christ's own ministry to report the mission of the twelve apostles. It looks then as if chapters 7 and 8 might well be intended to stand together as Stage 4 of the Gospel.
One theme receives special emphasis in these two chapters; the topic of salvation. That we can see in the first place from the repetition of the Greek verb for 'save', sōzō. This verb and its compound diasōzō (to rescue, bring safely through, save) can carry a wide range of meaning. In the New Testament sōzō is used of saving people in a physical sense from danger or disaster, for example from drowning (see Matt 8:25). It can also denote 'saving' in the sense of 'healing' as in Matthew 9:22. It can and frequently does have the deeper sense of 'forgiveness' and 'salvation from a life of sin' (see Luke 7:50; Titus 3:5). The related nouns sōtēria (salvation) and sōtēr (Saviour) are used in connection with the consummation of salvation at the second coming of Christ (see Rom 13:11; Phil 3:20–21). In a sense, therefore, one could claim that virtually the whole of the New Testament is taken up with the theme of salvation. Nonetheless it remains true that in Luke's two chapters 7 and 8 there is a higher than average concentration of the term 'save'. The verb diasōzō occurs at Luke 7:3 and nowhere else in the whole of the Gospel. Before chapter 7 the verb sōzō occurs only once (see Luke 6:9); but [p 126] in chapters 7 and 8 it occurs five times (see Luke 7:50; 8:12, 36, 48, 50). Let us consider these occurrences.
The story of the woman in Simon's house (see Luke 7:36–50) is peculiar to Luke. It is in fact a moving story of salvation: 'your faith has saved you: go in peace' says Christ to the once fallen and now forgiven woman (Luke 7:50). The remaining stories Luke shares with the other evangelists but he uses the word 'save' more than they do.
In describing the healing of the centurion's slave Matthew uses two verbs: therapeuō (Matt 8:7), which means 'to treat' or 'to heal', and iaomai (Matt 8:8, 13), which means 'to heal'. Luke uses three verbs: iaomai (Luke 7:7) and hygiainō, which means 'to be well', but in the introduction to the story (Luke 7:3) diasōzō meaning 'to save' in the sense of saving the slave from dying.
At Luke 8:4–15 Luke records the parable of the Sower, as do also Matthew (see Matt 13:3–23) and Mark (see Mark 4:3–20). All three evangelists, of course, explain who are the people represented by the seed which fell by the wayside: they are those who hear the word, and immediately the devil comes and snatches away what has been sown in their hearts. Only Luke adds why the devil does it: 'so that they may not believe and be saved' (Luke 8:12).
Matthew (Matt 8:28–34), Mark (Mark 5:1–20) and Luke (Luke 8:26–39) all tell the story of the demoniac, and all three record how the bystanders told the crowds who came out from the nearby city what had happened. Luke, and only Luke, phrases their explanation like this: 'those who saw it told them how the demon-possessed man was saved' (Luke 8:35).
All three synoptic evangelists tell the interconnected stories of the woman subject to bleeding and Jairus' daughter. All three relate that the woman 'was saved' (i.e. healed, Matt 9:22; Mark 5:34; Luke 8:48). But when it comes to Jairus' daughter Matthew does not use the term 'saved' at all. Mark uses it in the request for help which Jairus made to Christ while the girl was still alive (see Mark 5:23). Luke, by contrast, uses the term, but not at that point in the story. He waits until the girl is dead and everyone has given up hope, and then records Christ's words to Jairus: 'Only believe and she shall be saved' (Luke 8:50). That certainly gives the word 'save' a remarkable connotation. [p 127]
Luke, then, in these two chapters has collected a number of stories which he presents to us as instances of salvation. The merest glance will show that they are not all instances of the same aspect of salvation. Moreover, along with these instances he presents other incidents which without actually using the term 'save' are clearly intended as further instances of salvation. Together they form an impressive array. The centurion's slave is saved from dying (see Luke 7:2–3); the widow of Nain's son, already dead and on his way to be buried, is raised from the dead (see Luke 7:12–15). The woman in Simon's house is saved from her guilty past by the gift of forgiveness (see Luke 7:47–50). The disciples on the lake are saved from drowning in the storm (see Luke 8:23–24). The demoniac is saved from the power of demons (see Luke 8:27–36). The woman subject to bleeding is saved from a debilitating physical weakness (see Luke 8:43–48), while Jairus' daughter is saved from the sleep of death (see Luke 8:50–55).
Presumably Luke means these incidents to be in some sense representative examples of Christ's power to save. But in addition to these incidents, chapters 7 and 8 contain two lengthy passages of comment and teaching: the first deals with matters that arose over John the Baptist (see Luke 7:18–35) and the second contains a selection of parables, that of the sower being the most prominent (see Luke 8:4–21). The question naturally arises whether or not the topics discussed in these two passages have anything to do with the topic of salvation, and if so, what. We have already noticed that Luke has explicitly connected the parable of the Sower with the question of salvation (see Luke 8:12); but the passage dealing with John the Baptist does not explicitly use the term. Mark has no counterpart to this passage; Matthew (see Matt 11:2–19) has, but he puts it in an altogether different context from Luke, after the mission of the twelve apostles, and not like Luke, before that mission. To discover, if we can, why Luke has put it in the position he has and what if anything it has got to do with its context, we could look at the way Luke has arranged his material in this stage as a whole. Very early on in our study [p . 5] we noticed that the story of the woman in Simon's house, which is peculiar to Luke, has striking similarities with the story of the woman subject [p 128] to bleeding, which he shares with other evangelists. Perhaps he has included the passage about John the Baptist in this context because it also raises questions that in his mind are related to matters raised elsewhere in this stage of the Gospel. We can but look and see. Let us begin by making a list of contents.
The first story (see Luke 7:2–10) records the salvation of the centurion's servant from dying. Luke joins it by means of the words 'and it came to pass soon afterwards' (Luke 7:11) to the story of the widow of Nain's son (see Luke 7:11–17) whom Christ raised from the dead. Since Luke seems to link these incidents together and they both deal with salvation from death let us call Luke 7:2–17 Movement 1.
Next (see Luke 7:18–23) Luke tells how John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to Christ with a question, and what answer Christ gave to that question. This is followed, after the departure of John's disciples, by a long rebuke of the crowd for their perverse attitude towards both John and Christ (see Luke 7:24–35). Since both these passages involve John, let us call them Movement 2.
There follows the story of the woman in Simon's house, who attended Christ with tears, kisses and ointment. Luke then links this story by means of the words 'and it came to pass soon afterwards' to his record of a group of women who followed Christ and his disciples and 'supported them out of their private means' (Luke 8:1–3). Let us call these two stories about women devoted to Christ Movement 3.
From Luke 8:4 onwards Christ begins to teach in parables. There is the parable of the Sower (Luke 8:4–15), the parable of the Lamp (Luke 8:16–18), and then at the end when his mother and brothers come looking for him he announces in metaphorical language 'my mother and brothers are those who hear the Word of God and do it' (Luke 8:19–21). Let us call this parable section (Luke 8:4–21) Movement 4.
At this point the narrative turns to relate a voyage which Christ and his disciples made across the lake and back again. The story contains four distinct episodes. One, the storm, occurred as they were crossing the lake (see Luke 8:22–25). We may call it Movement 5. The next, the saving of the demoniac, occurred when they landed [p 129] on the other side (see Luke 8:26–39). We may call it Movement 6. The other two episodes took place when they arrived back. The first was the saving of the woman subject to bleeding (see Luke 8:40–48), and we may call it Movement 7; and the second was the saving of Jairus' daughter (Luke 8:49–56): we may call that Movement 8.
Now in the same way as the story of the woman in Simon's house and the story of the woman subject to bleeding show certain similarities and contrasts in the detail of their subject-matter so do some of the other stories, as will appear if we now map out the main details of the eight movements (see Table 6). It will be one of the chief tasks of our exposition to try to see the point of these similarities and contrasts. [p 130] [p 131]
Table 6 Stage 4 of the Coming Luke 7:2–8:56
| 1 The centurion to Christ: ‘Speak the word and my slave will be healed. For I also am a man set under authority . . . and I say . . . “Go,” and he goes . . . and I say . . . “Come,” and he comes’ . . . And . . . Jesus was amazed . . . and said . . . ‘I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel.’ | 1 And he [Jesus] rebuked the wind and the raging water, and they ceased . . . And he said ‘Where is your faith?’ And . . . they were amazed saying . . . ‘Who then is this that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’ |
| 2 The widow of Nain’s son was about to be buried when Christ said, ‘Young man . . . get up’ [Gk. egerthēti]. And the dead man sat up and began to speak . . . And fear seized all of them. | 2 Christ fell asleep and the boat was filling with water and they were in danger of going down. ‘And they . . . roused him [Gk. diēgeiran] . . . and he got up [Gk. diegertheis] and rebuked the wind . . . And they were afraid . . .’ |
| 2. False expectations of salvation and rejection of the Saviour: John and the ‘men of this generation’ Luke 7:18–35 | 6. Salvation from spirit powers, and rejection of the Saviour: the demoniac and the men of the country Luke 8:26–39 |
| 1 John wonders if Jesus is ‘the coming one’ or if they should be looking for someone else. Jesus does many miracles in the presence of John’s messengers and bids them ‘Go and report to John what you have seen and heard . . .’ | 1 The saved demoniac asks to accompany Christ, but Christ sends him away saying, ‘Go back home and recount what great things God has done for you . . .’ And he went away, and told all over the town what great things Jesus had done for him. |
| 2 ‘What did you go to see? . . . a man clothed in soft raiment? Those who are splendidly dressed and live in luxury are in kings’ palaces. But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes . . . and . . . more than a prophet.’ | 2 And they went out to see what had happened . . . and they found the man (who for a long time had worn no clothes) . . . sitting, clothed and in his right mind at the feet of Jesus. |
| 3 ‘All the people . . . justified God, being baptized by John’s baptism. But the Pharisees . . . rejected the counsel of God, not being baptized by him.’ They said John had a demon! | 3 And they . . . told them how the demon-possessed man was saved [i.e. they told them about the demons entering the pigs and the pigs being drowned in the lake]; and all the people . . . asked Jesus to depart. |
| 3. Salvation and the love and service of the forgiven: the woman in Simon’s house and the women who served Luke 7:36–8:3 | 7. Salvation from the waste of life’s vital forces: the woman subject to bleeding Luke 8:40–48 |
| 1 ‘a . . . woman . . . standing behind at his feet . . . began to wet his feet with her tears. . .’. | 1 . . . a woman . . . came behind him and touched the border of his garment . . . |
| 2 ‘. . . the Pharisee . . . said . . . “If this man were a prophet, he would have perceived who and what kind of woman this is that is touching him . . .”’ | 2 . . . Jesus said, ‘Who is it that touched me?’ And when all denied . . . Jesus said, ‘Someone did touch me, for I perceived that power had gone out from me.’ |
| 3 ‘And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”’ | 3 And he said, ‘Daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace.’ |
| 4 ‘Certain women who had been healed . . . served and supported them out of their own private means.’ | 4 A woman . . . who had spent all her living on doctors and could not be healed . . . |
| 4. The mysteries of the kingdom relating to salvation: the parables of the sower, the lamp and the family Luke 8:4–21 | 8. Salvation and a ‘secret’ raising of the dead: the awakening of Jairus’ daughter from the sleep of death. Luke 8:49–56 |
| 1 ‘To you is given to know the mysteries [i.e. the revealed secrets] of the kingdom of God, but to the rest in parables, that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand.’ | 1 He allowed no one to enter with him except Peter, John, James and the girl’s parents. And . . . he said . . . ‘She is not dead, but asleep.’ But they [the crowd] laughed at him knowing that she was dead . . . And he ordered the parents to tell no one what had happened. |
| 2 ‘. . . the devil . . . takes away the word from their hearts so that they might not believe and be saved.’ | 2 One said, ‘Your daughter is dead, don’t trouble the teacher any more.’ But Jesus . . . replied, ‘Only believe and she will be saved.’ |
| 3 The true family circle: Christ’s mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. | 3 The restored family circle: Christ, his apostles, the father and mother and the child raised from the dead. |
The movements
- Salvation from death: a gift to faith (Luke 7:2–17)
- False expectations of salvation, and rejection of the Saviour (Luke 7:18–35)
- Salvation and the love and service of the forgiven (Luke 7:36–8:3)
- The mysteries of the kingdom relating to salvation (Luke 8:4–21)
- Salvation from the physical elements (Luke 8:22–25)
- Salvation from spirit powers, and rejection of the Saviour (Luke 8:26–39)
- Salvation from the waste of life's vital forces (Luke 8:40–48)
- Salvation and a 'secret' raising of the dead (Luke 8:49–56)
1. Salvation from death: a gift to faith (Luke 7:2–17)
There is no doubt what aspect of salvation is presented by the stories of the centurion's slave and the widow of Nain's son: it is salvation from death. The stories are very dramatic: one man was on the point of death, the other was already dead and in process of being buried; and both were saved and given life.
These are the basic facts of the stories; but we are not left to make of them what we will. It is the explicit concern of the stories themselves to tell us on what conditions these men were saved from death and given new life. [p 132]
Take first the centurion. He was a Gentile, and in his humility (see Luke 7:7) he sent some Jewish elders to ask Christ to come and save his slave. They, however, made the common mistake of pleading for this salvation on the basis of the centurion's meritorious works. Now certainly the centurion had a remarkable record of good works. He loved the Jewish nation and had built the local Jews a synagogue (see Luke 7:5). When we take into consideration the cost of such a building, and the fact that normally Romans, like the later satirist Juvenal, despised the Jews, their faith and their prayer houses, we can understand perhaps why the Jews pleaded that 'this man is worthy to have you do this for him'. Christ listened to their plea and began to go with them to the centurion's house. In the centurion's works Christ doubtless saw evidence of an honest heart genuinely seeking to please God the best he knew how.
But the centurion knew better than to rest his plea for the salvation of his slave on his personal merit. When he realized that the Lord was approaching his house, he sent friends to tell him, 'Lord, don't trouble yourself; I am not good enough for you to come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you' (Luke 7:6–7). Had it been only the emperor, Tiberius Caesar, from whom he had wished to receive some favour, much as he wanted it, he would not have considered himself sufficiently worthy or important to ask the emperor to come to his house personally to bestow the favour. He knew then enough etiquette, let alone spiritual sense, to realize that it was utterly out of place and irrelevant to prate about his own merits in the presence of Christ, or to suggest that upon consideration of his merits Christ ought to take the trouble to come to his house to effect the salvation he deserved. The very first thing he did was to disclaim all merit.
And then the centurion had perceived that such was the authority of Christ that he did not need to come to his house anyway. Christ need only speak a word of command, and the slave would be healed instantaneously (see Luke 7:7–8). As an officer in the army the centurion had only to issue an order and soldiers sprang to carry it out, because behind him and his order lay the authority [p 133] of the supreme commander of the Roman forces, his imperial majesty. What authority Christ commanded the centurion did not fully know; but his very request presumed Christ had authority over the forces of life and death. Recognizing that all the merit, power and authority lay in Christ and Christ's word, he humbly made his appeal: 'Say the word, and let my servant be healed'. Christ's amazed comment was (and notice that it is Christ's comment and not our own idea injected into the story): 'I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such great faith' (Luke 7:9).
This first instance of salvation, then, has itself explicitly laid down the fundamental principles on which salvation was given and received on that occasion, and presumably on all other occasions: salvation is not granted on the basis of a man's good works, worth or merit. It is given on the grounds of faith. And faith according to this story, is not confidence that we have done the best we could, that God will assess our merits generously; faith is abandoning trust in our works and merit and any thought of deserving salvation, and relying totally and without reserve on the person of Christ and the authority of his word.
But this lesson is so important and so difficult to grasp—notice again Christ's astonishment that a Gentile got it right when many Jews did not—that Luke has reinforced it by adding here a story which no other evangelist records, the story of the widow of Nain (see Luke 7:11–17). What a contrast she makes with the centurion: he a strong, commanding type of man with ample resources and many noble works to his credit; she a weak desolate widow. Now she was following her only son to the grave when Jesus moved with compassion stopped the sad procession of death, raised the young man to life, and gave him to his mother (see Luke 7:15). Notice the verb: he gave him to her. In that wonderful moment, no conditions were laid down, no promises extracted. The awesome gift of new, unexpected life was apparently an unconditional gift, an action of the unqualified grace of God.
Put both stories together, and they lay down positively and negatively what the conditions of salvation are. If you have many good [p 134] works to your credit and good resources like the centurion, or nothing at all like the widow, it makes no difference: for salvation is not of works, whether many or few, whether good or bad; it is by grace through faith, it is the gift of God.
The last two clauses, as the reader will have realized, are borrowed from Paul (see Eph 2:1–10). Not altogether arbitrarily: in the context in which he employs them, he is talking of salvation from spiritual death by the gift of new life in Christ. But obviously, whether it is salvation from physical death, as with the centurion's slave and the widow's son, or whether it is salvation from spiritual death, the basic principles of salvation are the same.
But to return to the centurion for a moment. In praising his faith Christ confessed that he had not found so great faith, no not in Israel (see Luke 7:9). Why not, we wonder? If salvation from death was a gift, why were people not clamouring for it?
One answer is that salvation was not simply by faith: it was by faith in Christ; and that meant, as many of the stories in this stage will make clear, recognizing, however dimly, who Jesus was, as the centurion or as the crowd at Nain did (see Luke 7:16). And this is where for many people the doubts and difficulties began, as we are now about to see.
2. False expectations of salvation and rejection of the Saviour (Luke 7:18–35)
If salvation depends on faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, it is at once evident why many of his contemporaries did not even apply to him for salvation: they did not believe that he was the Christ. The evidence for his claim, they would have said, was not only inadequate, it was negative. Luke candidly tells Theophilus—and us—about it. He records what Christ's contemporaries said and did and the reasons they gave for their rejection of both John the Baptist and Jesus. He records also what Jesus said and did in reply. And then he allows his readers to make up their own minds.
Of all that the present passage tells us perhaps the most disturbing thing is that John the Baptist himself at one stage suffered certain [p 135] doubts and perplexities about Jesus. In his public ministry he had announced Jesus as the 'coming one', that is, the one whose coming had long been promised by the prophets. He had declared that the coming one would exercise a twofold ministry: he would baptize in the Holy Spirit all those who repented and believed; but he would also 'burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire' and 'cut down every tree that did not bear good fruit and cast it into the fire' (Luke 3:9, 16–17). It would seem from his phrase 'even now is the axe laid at the root of the trees' (Luke 3:9) that he believed the judgment was imminent, and that the execution of God's wrath would follow shortly.
But at the time of which our passage speaks John was now in prison (see Luke 3:20; and compare Luke 7:18–19 with Matt 11:2–3). There it was reported to him by his disciples that Jesus was doing marvellous, miraculous things (see Luke 7:18); and that, of course, fitted in exactly with half of John's expectations of what the coming one would do. But Jesus was apparently making no attempt whatever to fulfil the other half of his expectations. He had not even made the slightest move to get John out of prison, or to execute God's judgment on the evil Herod who had put him there. Why not? How could he be the Messiah if he didn't? It was all right his going about healing an odd slave here and raising a widow's son from the dead there—John had nothing against that. But what about the big issues? When was Jesus going to start putting oppressive governments right? Abolishing evil rulers like Herod? Putting down the Roman tyranny and giving Israel her political independence under a just government once more? How could Jesus convincingly claim to be the answer to the world's problems if he failed to do these things, and merely contented himself with saving individuals? The matter perplexed John very deeply and he sent two disciples to Christ with the question: 'Are you the one who was destined to come, or should we be expecting someone else?'
John is not the only one to have felt the problem. To this very day there are many who feel that they cannot believe in Jesus if he is interested merely in the saving of individuals and not in putting right the great political, economic and social evils of the world. [p 136]
The Lord's reply (see Luke 7:21–23) was not to deny that he would ever execute God's judgment on evil men and governments. His reply was to do a number of miracles, such as Isaiah had prophesied Messiah would do (see Isa 35:3–5; 61:1–3), and to send John the story of them, that he might see beyond doubt that Jesus was fulfilling part of the programme that the prophets had laid down: and that if he was fulfilling one part already, he would fulfil the other part later on.
Messiah's programme, it is evident, had certain in-built priorities. In the fulfilling of Old Testament prophecy, Christ insisted that the preaching of the gospel to the individual (see Luke 7:22) must take precedence over the executing of God's judgment on the wicked in general and on unjust governments in particular. It would be a sorry thing for us all if that were not so. The day of the Lord will certainly come in spite of all complaints and criticisms that it is too long delayed (see 2 Pet 3:3–10); and it will come too soon for many people. The reason it waits is that 'God is long-suffering . . . not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance'. We may feel, like John, that the injustices we suffer cry out to be avenged. We may feel, again like John, that by delaying to right the world's wrongs, Jesus is putting his own reputation as Messiah at risk. But we serve a Messiah who in his compassion for men puts the salvation of the individual before his own reputation.
But for most of Christ's contemporaries, the difficulty they found in admitting that Jesus was the Messiah was altogether different from John's difficulty. So when John's messengers left, our Lord began to speak to the crowds about John, and in so doing to probe their consciences. The fact is that when John first began to preach in the wilderness, these people had gone out to him in their thousands (see Luke 3:7). Since then, however, many of them had tried to forget it. But our Lord would not allow them to. With powerful and deeply probing irony he reminded them not only that they had gone out into the desert to John the Baptist, but why it was they had gone out (see Luke 7:24–28). They had not gone out into the desert to see a reed shaken by the wind, or a man dressed in fine clothes. [p 137] Obviously not. They had gone out to John the Baptist because they had believed that he was the forerunner of Messiah prophesied of by Isaiah (see Isa 40). But if John was Messiah's forerunner, then Jesus was the Messiah, and the people, one and all, ought to have put their trust in him and to have received him as Saviour and sovereign Lord. Many had in fact done so; but many had not, and were busy trying to forget that they had ever thought there was anything in John the Baptist at all. They now maintained that John had a demon, that is, he was mad, and that Jesus was morally lax, irresponsible and dissolute (see Luke 7:33–34).
It is a common thing for people to get caught up in some religious experience or other and afterwards to change their mind about it and to be embarrassed by their former excitement. The thing that must interest us, at our distance in history, is what it was that made them change their minds. From what Luke tells us it was John's preaching, and in particular the significance he gave to his baptism (see Luke 7:29–30). John preached that the people's sins were intolerably obnoxious to God. They stood exposed to the wrath of God. 'You offspring of vipers' he thundered at them, 'who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come' (Luke 3:7). Many of the crowd including, and perhaps especially, the tax-gatherers, recognized that John's preaching was true (see Luke 7:29). They knew they were sinners. John's condemnation of their sin, his warnings of God's wrath, they accepted as God's just verdict on their lives; and they had themselves baptized in humble confession of their sin and of their need of salvation. Not so the Pharisees and the experts in the law. These were men who prided themselves on their meritorious keeping of the law of God and they were quite happy to rest their hope of salvation on their merits. Not that they would have claimed that they had kept God's law perfectly. But they felt sure that God Almighty, when it came to the final examination, would behave like a kindly schoolmaster or indulgent don, overlook their shortcomings and grant them an honourable pass. John's insistence that God's holiness could not countenance any shortcomings, they regarded as extreme. When he added that they had in principle (if [p 138] not in extent—though there was real doubt about that too) broken the law just like the tax-collectors and the ignorant masses, and stood equally exposed to the wrath of God and in equal need of salvation, they decided that John's preaching was simply grotesque, and that John himself had a demon and was emotionally unbalanced. 'Just look at his ascetic diet,' they said, as if the moral truth of a sermon could be settled by an appeal to the preacher's personality and habits. It was, Christ pointed out, God's law that John was expounding: in rejecting John's preaching on the holiness and wrath of God they were rejecting the very counsel of God (see Luke 7:30).
But then Christ went on to point out that to be consistent with their reasons for rejecting John they ought to have received Jesus. Though he, too, at times preached the wrath of God, more solemnly perhaps than any other had done (see Matt 5:21–22; 10:15; Mark 9:45–48; Luke 16:22–31), yet he brought a message of forgiveness and salvation and of the love of God delightful and joyful beyond all expectation. He had authority, he claimed, to grant men here on earth forgiveness in the full and absolute and final sense (see Luke 5:24). This surely would have pleased the Pharisees. They had not liked John's preaching of the wrath of God, understandably. But this preaching of the love of God, of a forgiveness so generous, so certain, that one could know oneself accepted with God here on earth without waiting for the final judgment—this they surely would have welcomed. The repentant tax-collectors and sinners welcomed it of course. But not the Pharisees! They pointed to Christ's lack of ascetic diet, and to his social mixing with tax-collectors and sinners (for the purpose of converting them), and denounced him as a religiously undisciplined man whose teachings positively encouraged people to neglect the law and live sinfully.
Christ's comment was that they were like children in the marketplace content with neither dancing nor weeping (see Luke 7:31–32). They would neither have the holiness and wrath of God, nor the love and forgiveness of God. All they wanted was a God small enough to compromise and to pretend that their imperfect keeping of the law was adequate, a salvation small enough for their merits [p 139] to earn it, and a doctrine of salvation that left the verdict of the final judgment decently uncertain.
If these then were the historical reasons why many of Christ's contemporaries rejected both John the Baptist and Jesus, we shall at least have no difficulty in understanding them: we hear them voiced frequently enough in our own day. But the charge that Christ's doctrine of salvation is a form of antinomianism is a serious one, if for no other reason than that a superficial and unbalanced statement of the doctrine can in fact make it sound very antinomian. At this point, however, Luke adds two stories, peculiar to himself, which have the effect of demonstrating the charge to be false. The effect is scarcely unintended.
3. Salvation and the love and service of the forgiven (Luke 7:36–8:3)
The two stories of Movement 1 demonstrated that salvation is not of works, but by grace through faith. Movement 3 will now present two stories to show that while salvation is not of works, once it is received it leads to good works. In so doing Movement 3 will answer the criticisms launched by the Pharisees and lawyers against Christ in the passage we have just considered.
One of the Pharisees invited Christ to a meal (see Luke 7:36). Perhaps he was in two minds about Jesus, impressed by his moral teaching to the point of thinking he might be a prophet, but distressed by the type of people he mixed with and claimed as his converts. At any rate, when a woman of the streets suddenly entered the dining room, and began to pay Christ personal attention, and Christ made no attempt to stop her, Simon decided that this finally proved that Jesus was no prophet: 'This man, if he were a prophet, would have perceived who and what kind of a woman this is that touches him, that she is a sinner' (Luke 7:37–39). Prophets above all people should have a true discernment of moral character.
Now it is true that this woman had been immoral; but apparently she had since been saved by faith in Christ (see Luke 7:50) and her sins had been forgiven. It is important to notice that the tense of [p 140] the verb in Luke 7:48 is perfect. Not, 'your sins are now (at this moment) forgiven you'; but 'yours sins have been (at some time in the past, however recently) forgiven'.28 The difficulty, however, would lie in convincing Simon of that. Any believer in Christ would have accepted Christ's word for it. But Simon was not a believer in Christ. He would need some very convincing evidence before he believed it. So Christ began by telling him a parable about two debtors, the nub of which was that a debtor who has been forgiven a debt by his creditor will love his creditor for it; and the bigger the debt forgiven, the greater will be the love. As a story the parable was true to life: there was nothing forced or strained about it. Indeed, Simon himself was happy to state the universally recognized principle of behaviour which the story illustrated; which made the application of the parable, when it came, unanswerable. If we may paraphrase that application it ran like this.
'Simon, I'm telling you', said Christ, 'that this woman's many sins have been forgiven. If you ask on what grounds I am claiming that, look at the evidence. This weeping over my feet, this wiping of them with her hair, this kissing and anointing of my feet—what does it all spring from, Simon? Did you not yourself say just now that where a debtor has been freely forgiven a large debt, he will feel immense gratitude and love towards the creditors who forgave him? This woman had certainly piled up an enormous debt. But look at her extreme gratitude and love towards me. Is that not, on your own admission, evidence that she has been forgiven that enormous debt?' Certainly it would be, if Christ were the great creditor who had authority to forgive human sin. A gasp of astonishment went round the room as the other guests suddenly saw the implication of what Christ was saying and tried to comprehend it: 'Who is this that even forgives sins?' (Luke 7:49).
Meanwhile, Simon had his own problem to wrestle with. His own treatment of Christ, as Christ had reminded him (see Luke 7:44), had scarcely risen to the normal courtesies of a host towards a guest. If gratitude and affection to Christ were the evidence that [p 141] one's sins had been forgiven, what did Simon's ingratitude reveal about Simon?
But to recur to the woman. Luke could scarcely have chosen a more appropriate example to place at this point in his narrative. Forgiveness is that aspect of salvation that most of all raises the question of its validity. Is it more than a condoning of sin? And of all the types of sinner who call for forgiveness, is not a woman of this kind one whose repentance people are most likely to doubt, whose return to her former ways people most readily expect, and whose conversion they are most likely to regard as bogus? Her kissing and anointing of our Lord's feet, her wiping of his feet with her hair, could it not be merely fleeting emotionalism? Or worse?
But let Luke tell his full story. 'And it came to pass soon afterwards', he says (Luke 8:1), that as Christ went on his preaching tours through villages and towns up and down the country, there followed him certain women who spent their time, money and energy looking after Christ and his band of apostles (Luke 8:1–3). Socially they were a very mixed group, and one of them, at least, came from the privileged classes. But what they all had in common was gratitude to Christ for having saved them from evil spirits and diseases. Not content to let their gratitude spend itself in mere emotionalism, they had voluntarily undertaken this tiresome, unromantic work at their own expense.
Together then the two stories of Movement 3 have made their common point: though salvation is, and must be, not by works, but by grace through faith, nonetheless where it is genuinely experienced, it will lead to love and gratitude to the Saviour, and love and gratitude will in turn lead to devotion and practical good works. Not that all professions of salvation are genuine, of course—but it is the function of the next movement to tell us about that.
4. The mysteries of the kingdom relating to salvation (Luke 8:4–21)
In Movement 3 we were offered evidence that the salvation preached by Christ is genuine and effective. To many people, however, the [p 142] whole question of salvation, its reception and outworking is a baffling mystery. They understand the importance of morality, and exhortations to lead a better life make good sense to them. It also seems reasonable to them to hope that if we do our best, in spite of our weaknesses and temptations, God will in the end be merciful in his verdict on us. But the idea that a person can in this present life hear the Word of God, believe and be saved (see Luke 8:12) makes little sense to them. A mystery in itself, it is also the one idea above all others that Satan will do his utmost to prevent from taking root in their hearts (see Luke 8:12). And when the matter is further complicated by the self-evident fact that many professions of salvation are very dubious or even false, they are inclined to dismiss the whole thing as incomprehensible if not a delusion.
According to Christ in the passage now before us (see Luke 8:10) this difficulty in understanding salvation is to be expected. God's way of salvation, that is, his way of establishing his kingdom, is admittedly a mystery; though the word 'mystery' has a somewhat different meaning on the lips of Christ from what it has in our normal modern parlance. He means that God's way of salvation is a plan devised by God which no one would ever have known anything about if God had not revealed it. He has of course revealed it through his Word and finally and fully through Christ and his apostles (see Eph 3:1–13). It is therefore an open secret. And yet for all that it is an open secret, people will never understand it unless Christ reveals it to them through speaking the living word of God into their hearts.
That does not mean that certain people are automatically and forever excluded from the possibility of understanding salvation; witness what happened when Christ spoke the parable of the Sower. This parable was explaining the processes and reactions which are set in motion when the word of God is preached with all its living power to produce faith and with faith salvation and the understanding of salvation. The disciples no more understood the meaning of the parable when they first heard it, than the rest of the people. But they had the sense to come and ask Christ for further illumination (see Luke 8:9), and he, of course, gave them their request. And so it is with [p 143] all matters relating to salvation. If the offer of salvation itself seems at first to the hearer to be wrapped up in obscure language, difficult to make sense of, the hearer can always apply in prayer to Christ for the necessary illumination. And it will be granted.
But now to the parables that were spoken on this occasion, that of the sower, the lamp and the family.
The parable of the Sower (see Luke 8:4–15) declares that there are four different responses among people to the offer of salvation presented by the preaching of the Word of God. One is the immediate thwarting of any effect at all by Satan himself (see Luke 8:12). The second is that while the word is superficially received, it is never allowed to take root; and when temptation comes, it exposes the reception as having been shallow and rootless. The third is that the word is listened to with some seriousness; but before the resolve to receive it and obey it can be acted upon, it is choked by the cares or the riches and pleasures of this life, and comes to nothing.
None of these reactions is any good. The only response that is of any use is when people in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast and bring forth fruit with endurance (see Luke 8:15). The Word of God is a living thing like seed. Where it is given the opportunity, it will show its living power by producing fruit. If no permanent fruit is produced, then one may question whether the word of God was truly received, just as Simon's complete lack of love and gratitude towards Christ showed that he had never received forgiveness and salvation. Nor is a temporary outburst of joy and enthusiasm valid evidence that the word has been received. There must be a patient continuing, a bringing of fruit to full growth (see Luke 8:13–14).
Similarly, the parable of the Lamp (see Luke 8:16–18) is directed to warning us to 'take heed how we hear' (Luke 8:18), that is to be careful what we do with what we hear. There are people who if they could be brought to confess where they stand, would profess to have received the gospel. And yet they never speak to anybody about it, not even to their friends or children. But that is very strange behaviour. The gospel by its very nature is light. No one would ever light a lamp and then put it under a pot or under a bed; he would put it [p 144] where it could give its light and be seen. It is impossible anyway permanently to hide where one stands in relation to the gospel. What is hidden will come out sooner or later—that is, it will if it is really there. The danger is, as Luke 8:18 points out, that the man who thinks he has received the gospel, and keeps it hidden and never lets the fact be known, may find one of these days, when he comes to look for the reality of the gospel within him, that it is not in fact there—and never was.
Finally, the parable of the Family (Luke 8:19–21) presses home the same point: if we claim to have a living relationship with Jesus Christ, then the evidence that we do in fact have that relationship will be found not simply in our claiming to have it, but in our hearing, obeying and doing of the word of God. If the hearing, obeying and doing are lacking, the existence of the relationship is brought seriously into question.
5. Salvation from the physical elements (Luke 8:22–25)
The table of contents for this stage (Table 6) suggests that we shall be doing what Luke intended us to do, if as we think over the contents of Movements 5–8 we hold in our minds the events and lessons of Movements 1–4.
At Luke 7:11–17 we were told of the widow of Nain's son who was on the very point of being buried when Christ intervened, and bade him get up. So the young man was saved just, as we might think, in the nick of time. At Luke 8:22–25 the position seems to go into reverse. Christ was asleep in a boat when there came a violent storm. The boat was filling with water and in imminent danger of going down to the bottom with all its passengers, but Christ slept on, apparently unaware of the danger. The disciples in alarm roused him: 'Master, Master, we are perishing.' At that he got up and rebuked the wind and waves and there was a great calm. Then he rebuked his disciples: 'Where is your faith?' he asked.
At first sight the rebuke might seem harsh. Their fear was so natural, and it did look as if they were going down any minute, and that Christ was unaware of it. Had Christ been awake and [p 145] clearly conscious of what was going on, and still had done nothing about it, that might have been different.
But though their fear was natural, the more we think about it, the less excuse there is for their lack of faith. The Gentile centurion (see Luke 7:2–17) had perceived that Jesus had powers of command over the forces of life and death. The disciples had been present when Jesus had rescued the widow's son from the very jaws of the grave; and the people of Nain had had enough perception to see that this was a divine intervention (see Luke 7:16) and that Jesus was, to go no further, a great prophet raised up by God. Had the disciples not listened to the conversation between Jesus and John's messengers, and heard his renewed affirmation, on the strength of his many miracles, that he was the 'one that should come', the Messiah come at last after centuries of prophecy and preparation to accomplish the purposes of God for the deliverance and redemption of Israel and of the Gentiles?
Granted then that the disciples' fear was natural and instinctive; but where was their logic? If Jesus was what even at this early stage in their experience they believed him to be, logic should have told them that the divine plan for the redemption of mankind was not about to founder because a sudden storm had caught the longpromised Messiah asleep and he had inadvertently perished. But fear is a powerful demolisher of logic, and in any case they were still learners: they believed John and they believed Jesus and accepted his miraculous demonstrations of his Messiah-hood; yet it still surprised them to find he was Lord of the physical elements (see Luke 8:25).
There is less excuse for our lapses of faith and logic, if at one extreme we confess Jesus as God incarnate and then dismiss this present story contemptuously as a mere 'nature-miracle', or if at the other extreme, we confess Jesus as Lord of the universe and then fear that he has forgotten about us and our circumstances.
We live in a universe that is lethally hostile to human life: only the miracle of creation and divine maintenance preserves our planet and its wonderful adaptations and provisions for the propagation of human life. Within our earth itself wind, wave, lightning, storm, flood, drought, avalanche, earthquake, fire, heat, cold, germ, virus, [p 146] epidemic, all from time to time threaten and destroy life. Sooner or later one of them may destroy us. The story of the stilling of the storm is not, of course, meant to tell us that Christ will never allow any believer to perish by drowning, or by any other natural disaster. Many believers have so perished. It does demonstrate that he is Lord of the physical forces in the universe, that for him nothing happens by accident, and that no force in all creation can destroy his plan for our eternal salvation or separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (see Rom 8:38–39).
6. Salvation from spirit powers, and rejection of the Saviour (Luke 8:26–39)
Movement 5 depicted salvation from the physical forces of nature. But physical forces are not the only powers in the universe that are potentially hostile to man. There are spirit powers that seek man's destruction: seducing spirits as Scripture calls them (see 1 Tim 4:1–2) and Satan himself (see Acts 26:18). The demoniac is an extreme example of what satanic forces can do with a human personality that has come under their complete domination. Unlike the Holy Spirit, who always sets a man free, develops his personality and increases his self-control and dignity, satanic forces seem to strive to overpower a man's personality, and ultimately to break down his self-control, and to rob him, as they did the demoniac, of self-respect. These spirit forces gave the man great power: he had often broken the chains and fetters with which well-meaning friends had bound him (see Luke 8:29). Unfortunately some people are fascinated by spirit-power. Any experience that gives them what appears to be more than human power will automatically commend itself to them as valid and good. And therein lies the deception. Spirit beings can indeed give people amazing power; but in the end those powers will prove destructive of human personality and self-control. So it was with the demoniac. When asked what his name was, he did not reply, John or Thomas, or whatever name it was his parents had given him (see Luke 8:30). Long since he had given up the struggle to be himself, to control his own life. [p 147] A legion of evil powers controlled him. Morbid and shameless he dwelt among the tombs (see Luke 8:27). Of course the man was an extreme case, but a warning nonetheless of what it will mean for human beings to perish, as they will unless they are set free from the power of sin and Satan by Christ (see Eph 2:2; Col 1:13).
Movement 6, then, is the story of how Christ delivered the man's personality from the domination of evil spirits, and restored his freedom and self-control. But it is more. Had it been only that, the story could have concluded at Luke 8:33, but Luke spends another four verses (see Luke 8:34–39) describing the response of the local townspeople to Christ's deliverance of the demoniac. A solemn story it is too. When Christ first approached the demoniac, the man had pleaded to be left alone. Christ overruled him. The man was not a free agent; acting under force majeure he was but voicing the will of his demonic masters. Christ disregarded the request for he was concerned to give the man his freedom, and to bring him to the point where any request he would make would be the expression of his own free will. But when the townspeople asked Christ to depart, he granted their request at once and departed (see Luke 8:37). Their request was the expression of their own free choice made with their eyes open and in full view of all the evidence; and Christ respected their choice. He will never remove a man's free will, not even in order to save him.
Even so Luke has not finished with his story, but spends another two verses (see Luke 8:38–39) telling us that as Christ was leaving, the demoniac, now set free, asked Jesus to be allowed to accompany him. His request was refused; for what reasons we shall see presently.
Now if we think back to Luke 7:18–35 we shall recall that that passage described the rejection of Christ by a group of people, as does the present passage. The 'men of this generation' (Luke 7:31) had gone out into the desert to see this startling phenomenon that was John the Baptist, originally under the impression that he was the forerunner of the Messiah. Eventually they repudiated him and his preaching, claiming that his ascetic habits showed that he had a demon. It was [p 148] a highly doubtful accusation; but it is understandable that no one would want a man with a demon about the place.
Against that, put the case of the demoniac of our passage. There was no doubt about his demon possession. Some of the local townspeople had at times tried to bind him with chains and to restrain his self-destructive and anti-social behaviour. Yet when Christ not simply restrained the man, but expelled the demons and saved him completely, they did not like it. They who had helped the man before, now asked his Saviour to depart.
Why? They were afraid, says Luke. Twice over he tells us so (see Luke 8:35, 37). Strange. Luke does not say that they were afraid of the man when he roamed the cemetery naked. Perhaps they were, perhaps they weren't. But whether they were or not, was it not strange that they should be afraid now that they saw the man sitting clothed and in his right mind? What had they to be afraid of? One can only conclude that they were afraid of Christ, afraid of his supernatural, and to them mysterious, power to cast out demons. They could not understand the change that had come over the man. To them the power that had brought it about was frightening. But what a sad comment on man's fallen and unregenerate state it is, that man should feel more at home with demons, than with the Christ who has power to cast out demons.
Yet it is often so. Men who would try to help a criminal or a drunkard, or, if they should prove incorrigible, would want the one imprisoned and the other put into hospital, find it embarrassing and somewhat frightening if the criminal or drunkard is saved by Christ and turned into a sane, wholesome, regenerate, disciple. They do not understand how the change has been effected. They may be pleased for the man's sake that his condition has improved; but they want nothing to do with the one who has made the improvement: they do not intend themselves to become his disciples.
There was also another reason, of course, for the people's fear. Luke stresses the fact that the herdsmen who had witnessed what had happened to the herd of pigs told the people of the district 'how the demoniac was saved' (Luke 8:31–36). The story of the pigs is a strange [p 149] one in our ears. The demons asked that if they must be expelled from the man, they might be permitted to enter the swine; but when the swine ran into the lake and were drowned, the demons presumably lost their temporary embodiment once more. Christ had surely anticipated what would happen, and had deliberately allowed it. The destruction of the pigs would vividly demonstrate what must have been the even greater eventual destruction of the man, had the demons been left in control. In a sense the pigs had acted as the man's substitute. Had the man himself been drowned in the lake, that also would have got rid of the demons from him; but it would have got rid of the man himself as well. So the pigs died and were buried in the sea; the man himself walked free. But that faced the people of the district with a big and a frightening choice: they were gripped with a tremendous fear, says Luke (see Luke 8:37). Some of them, as we have noticed, had been willing to help the man when it was a matter of chaining him up; but if a man's deliverance from demons was going to cost a whole herd of pigs, that was a different matter altogether. A herd of pigs represented an enormous amount of food and money! They decided they must ask Christ to depart before, perhaps, he started saving any further demoniacs.
Christ granted their request; but when the saved demoniac asked to be allowed to accompany Christ, Christ refused him. Freedom for this man would not mean pleasing himself, even though his pleasure was to be with Christ, where doubtless he felt safest. Freedom was in freely obeying the commands of the one sitting at whose feet he had found peace and sanity. So the man was sent back to his home and town as a witness, and a very enthusiastic witness he proved to be (see Luke 8:39). If ever 'wisdom was justified by her children' (Luke 7:35), it was in the case of this man whom incarnate wisdom had restored to soundness of mind. Perhaps in the months that followed, as the people of the countryside observed him and heard his story of what Christ had done, they lost their fear of Christ, as John the Baptist lost his doubts when his disciples reported to him the wonderful things that Christ had performed (see Luke 7:21–23). [p 150]
7. Salvation from the waste of life's vital forces (Luke 8:40–48)
'When Jesus returned the crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him' says Luke (Luke 8:40), using a word for expecting [p rosdokaō] which he had earlier used in John the Baptist's question 'or do we look for another' (Luke 7:20). What expectations filled the minds of the crowd! A certain Jairus, in particular, was eagerly awaiting the Lord's return. His only daughter lay dying, and it was doubtless with some impatience that he was waiting for Christ to come back so that he could ask him to come to his house to save his daughter (see Luke 8:41). As soon then as Christ arrived he came and put his request, and Christ began to go with him to his house. But as he went, Luke explains, the crowds thronged him (see Luke 8:42) and Christ was held up and could make no progress. Then a woman came for healing (see Luke 8:43) and that detained Christ still further. It must have been torture for Jairus.
At this point, if we are used to reading the gospel stories each one separately as virtually independent units, we shall see no problem in what we are now being told. If, on the other hand, we have managed to remember what Luke so very deliberately told us in the story of the centurion, a question may well arise and it will run like this: What did it matter if the Lord was held up and could not make his way to Jairus' house? Was it not the central point of the centurion's story that Christ had the ability to save at a distance, and did in fact save the centurion's slave from dying without having to go to the centurion's house? Why then did Christ not put Jairus out of his agony of waiting by simply speaking the word and saving Jairus' daughter from dying without waiting to get to Jairus' house? Has Luke himself so far forgotten what he took such pains to tell us about the centurion that he does not realize that this present story must raise a question in the mind of anyone who has taken the earlier story seriously? Luke, of course, does not answer the question here; and when he finally gets round to finishing Jairus' story, some of the further details he gives will but only add to the mystery.
Meanwhile he follows the interruption in the proceedings brought about by a woman who tried to obtain healing simply by touching the border of Christ's garment. Luke presents her case [p 151] as another example of 'salvation' (Luke 8:48) and since his examples so far have illustrated different aspects of salvation, we might well begin by asking what aspect of salvation is presented here. Like the demoniac's this woman's case was chronic (see Luke 8:27–29 and 43); but her case quite clearly had nothing to do with demons. It was a physical weakness, probably a uterine haemorrhage. It was sapping her vital physical forces, and also apparently draining away her monetary resources (see Luke 8:43): she had spent all her living in a vain attempt to find a cure.29 It is part of the weakness and brokenness which we humans inherit as a result of the fall, that in addition to straightforwardly physical mechanisms, various psychosomatic processes can also sometimes go wrong, with similar results. Fear is a notable example. Designed to promote or protect life, it can run out of control, and waste the body's energies all to no purpose.
Be that as it may, the chief interest in the story lies once more in how the sufferer was healed: over and over again we are told about her touching Christ. Four out of the story's six verses are spent on telling us how the woman tried to gain healing by touching the edge of Christ's garment without being observed; but this proved impossible because Christ perceived that someone had touched him, and insisted on knowing who it was that had touched him; at which point the disciples protested that with the crush of people round him, it was silly to ask who had touched him; but Christ insisted that someone had touched him and would not be content until the woman came forward and in front of all the people confessed why she had touched him. If after all this we have not realized that Luke wants us to take seriously Christ's ability to perceive someone's touch we have just not been paying attention to what Luke is saying. Moreover we cannot help recalling that the story of the woman in Simon's house (see Luke 7:36–50) was very concerned about a woman's touching Christ. The crucial question for Simon was whether or not [p 152] Christ could perceive the character of the woman who was touching him. Simon initially decided that Christ could not, for if he had been able, he would not, in Simon's judgment, have allowed the woman to touch him at all. We must, therefore, examine these twin matters of touching and our Lord's powers of perception in these two stories.
We notice to start with that the trouble with both women was related to their sex: with the first it was a moral weakness, with the second it was physical. In Jewish thinking the touch of both women would have brought defilement: this was what Simon felt about the woman in his house, and what Leviticus 15:19–27 declared about the woman with bleeding. She herself was unclean (see Lev 15:25) and therefore whoever touched her became unclean. It meant that both women would have known the hurt and alienation of being regarded unfit to have contact with clean and decent people. For both women salvation removed the alienation by removing its cause and reintroduced them into healthy society. Perhaps one reason why the woman with bleeding tried to be healed without anyone knowing was not only natural modesty, but also fear of the people: religious people in the crowd could have been angry with her for mingling with them and thus infecting them with her uncleanness. If so, not the least benefit of her healing was that from then on she could mix freely with people without the hidden fear of her weakness being detected. At the moral level forgiveness did the same for the woman in Simon's house: Christ's public validation of the genuineness of her salvation made it possible for her to feel accepted in decent society without the fear of her past being constantly brought up against her. Salvation meant reintegration.
In the second place we notice that though both stories raise the question of Christ's powers of perception, the point at issue is different on each occasion. In the first story the question is whether Christ can perceive the character of the woman who is touching him; in the second whether he can perceive the fact that someone has touched him. Strict moralist that Simon was, he would have been aware of people's tendency to put on false fronts and poses to hide their real characters; and although his attitude was one which could easily [p 153] degenerate into hard, unloving, suspicion and lack of trust, his concern to protect decent people from the deceptions of undesirable characters was surely in itself sound and realistic. According to him a prophet should be more than naturally shrewd at penetrating disguises and seeing through people (see 1 Kgs 14:2–6); and he concluded that Christ could not read the woman's true character and therefore was no true prophet and was being taken in. The event as we know proved Simon wrong. Simon had kept his thoughts to himself (see Luke 7:39), but Christ read his thoughts without being told them (see Luke 7:40). Moreover he showed himself fully aware of the kind of person the woman had been. He interpreted her 'touching' of him very differently from Simon; but he also provided Simon with an undeniable argument that his interpretation was correct.
The need for correctly interpreting the evidence in such cases remains a constant practical problem. People like this woman, and criminals of various kinds, are notorious for making false professions of salvation and trading on the gullibility of the Christian community. Where that community is taken in, moreover, a scandal can arise against the gospel and against the whole concept of conversion and salvation. On the other hand, when people of this kind are genuinely converted, it can gravely damage their spiritual progress if the Christian community is unduly suspicious and refuses to trust and accept them. It certainly requires more than human wisdom to interpret correctly the evidence presented by such professed converts.
In the case of the second woman the crucial question was Christ's ability to perceive not merely something about the woman but also something about himself. He knew, so he said, that someone had touched him in a more than casual or superficial way, because he perceived that power had gone out from him (see Luke 8:46). This tells us the supremely important fact that the power that saves us is not an impersonal power. True, the power of Christ was transmitted to the woman when she touched not him but merely the border of his garment. She was healed because hers was genuine faith and not mere superstition (see Luke 8:48); but she found out what genuine faith must mean: we cannot be saved by the power of [p 154] Christ without having to do with Christ as a person. It is impossible, for the simple reason that we cannot exercise faith in Christ and draw on his power without his knowing; but the impossibility saves us from at least two dangers. It saves faith from degenerating into superstition and regarding Christ (or his garments) like a relic possessed of some magical impersonal power. It also saves faith from being merely a form of selfishness and salvation from being regarded as merely self-improvement. Many a man has first come to Christ simply to get power to overcome some weakness or other like, say, obsessive gambling or alcoholism that is ruining his body and wasting his resources. Christ stands ready to answer every such call for help. But in his mercy he will not have such a person treat his salvation as a cure; he will insist that such a man come to know him as a person, and, like the woman, to confess him publicly as Saviour.
8. Salvation and a 'secret' raising of the dead (Luke 8:49–56)
Luke now resumes the story of Jairus and his daughter, and we remember our question: why did not Christ relieve Jairus of his agony of suspense by using his well-advertised power of saving at a distance and by delivering his daughter from dying without waiting to come to his house?
We may surmise that one reason might have been to test and so to strengthen Jairus' faith. When the centurion said to Christ 'Lord don't trouble yourself' (Gk. mē skyllou) it was an expression of faith (Luke 7:6). When someone from Jairus' house told him not to trouble the Teacher any more (Gk. mēketi skylle), it was a temptation to give up faith in Christ on the grounds that it was now too late, the situation had gone beyond Christ's ability to do anything about it. Christ countered that temptation and saved Jairus from hopeless sorrow by challenging him to persistence in faith: 'only believe and she shall be saved' (Luke 8:50).
Then, of course, there is the simple and obvious fact that if Christ had saved the girl at a distance, the last example of salvation in this series of examples would have been a case of salvation from [p 155] dying; as it is, it is appropriately enough a case of salvation from death itself. Now the widow of Nain's son was saved from death; but his story, we found, was part of a lesson on the conditions upon which salvation is granted. The lesson of the story of Jairus' daughter is different: the centre point is that while all the people knew that the girl was dead—and she was really dead—Christ insisted that death for her was only sleep (see Luke 8:52). Taught by Christ believers ever since have regarded the death of the body as a sleep, and through the apostle Paul they have been further taught to believe that the final phase of their salvation will occur when the Lord comes and awakens their dead bodies from the sleep of death (1 Thess 4:14–17).
In light of this, one would have to be impervious to every drop of imagination not to treat the story of the raising of Jairus' daughter as the Fourth Gospel treats the raising of Lazarus (see John 11). In that case also Christ refused to heal Lazarus at a distance or to go to Bethany in time to save Lazarus from dying. He first stayed away until Lazarus 'fell asleep' (Luke 11:11), then came to Bethany to wake him out of sleep (Luke 11:11), and finally made his raising from the dead a foreshadowing of the great resurrection of the dead at the second coming (Luke 11:24–27).
If there is any truth in the suggestion that the raising of Jairus' daughter was intended as a prefigurement of the resurrection at the Lord's coming, it might also help to explain the other problem that besets this story: Christ's insistence on secrecy. No one was allowed into the house except three disciples and the parents (see Luke 8:51); and after the girl was brought back from the dead, the parents were commanded not to tell anyone what had happened (see Luke 8:56). How, we wonder, could the matter possibly be kept secret? All the people outside knew she was dead. The professional mourners had been hired for the funeral and were already busy weeping and wailing. Were they not to be told that their services were no longer required, and why? And even if they were not told, they would soon see the girl alive once more, and the news would spread like wildfire. If it was to be a secret, it would be an open secret. [p 156]
But then that is what a 'mystery' in the New Testament sense of the word is. And a mystery is what certain details of the resurrection at the coming of Christ are said to be (see 1 Cor 15:51). If in Movement 4 Christ explains one mystery of the kingdom which he had communicated by means of a parable (see Luke 8:10–15), it is not perhaps altogether unthinkable that in Movement 8 he is illustrating another great mystery by means of a miracle.
Notes
28And so also in v. 47.
29The phrase at Luke 8:43 'having spent all her living on doctors' is absent from many manuscripts (though a similar phrase is present in Mark 5:26) and for that reason it is omitted from some translations. According to Marshall, Luke, 344, no clear cut decision is possible either for or against omission. [p 157]
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